偶然 (Chance)
ʚ Title: 偶然 (Chance) for sunskyivee ♡
ʚ Pairing(s): Kyungsoo/Yifan
ʚ Rating: PG-13
ʚ Warnings: some swearing
ʚ Word count: 3646 words
ʚ Summary: Kyungsoo has never shown any expressions, his emotions only storming through his fingers into the music that screams from the piano, until Yifan stumbles across the pianist in the third floor music room door one day and reads between the notes.
ʚ Author’s notes/Messages for the recipient: Thanks so much to the mods for being so understanding. Thanks to my recipent for the chance to write this pairing; I hope you like the story and that I did the prompt justice. Thank you to A for beta-ing despite travel and to tlist for being there, and finally to someone who should really join that thing. Really.
Japanese text is taken from Akanishi Jin's Mi Amor (lyrics). The title, 偶然, means chance or coincidence. 然 is possiblity and 偶 is accident, or conversely, couple.
Kyungsoo
星一つ 捕まえて 今出かけよう
His piano teacher always told him "piano, piano, pianissimo" but Kyungsoo felt in crashes and bangs and explosion. Beethoven, not Debussy. Tchaikovsky, not Satie. His fingers scraped over the black and white ivory, the wood and strings crying, moaning, and screaming into the dark.
After a while she gave up. There was just no reasoning with a boy who "never showed a single expression on his blank face; I'm positive I could shout at him and he wouldn't blink an eyelash." In fact, she had shouted at him, not once in a while but often, his impassive expression steady as the the raging ocean of her words crashed over and through and past him, leaving the rock untouched.
A different teacher came after that, and then another one, and then another, faces recycled like the new paint on the hulls of fishing boats every season as they went out to face the anger and rage of the waves.
Kyungsoo stood in the music room, beside his piano, and watched each new face being led in, bright and fresh and hopeful at the start of each new fishing season before the tides came, and the storms, and the blank days with no destination in sight. Crew members would resort to venting their frustrations on each other - "you're such a useless child why can't you do what I tell you? And wipe that smirk off your face!"- they always left, battered and bruised against an impenetrable ocean that absorbed all shock and took no damage, only the black and white piano keys taking each new pounding as Romeo died over and over again and Juliet drove the knife into her side with a red rush of emotion.
There were no roses here.
By the time Kyungsoo was in high school he had been left largely to his own devices; with an executive for a father and a high society lady for a mother, neither had time nor inclination to molly-coddle - as they thought - a strange and somehow offensive child. He had been shipped to an exclusive boarding school for his middle years, which he had hated and which had in turn hated him. So for high school, he was allowed a choice of the five elite academies within the city perimeter and that was that. His parents officially washed their hands off him.
Kyungsoo, in the meantime, battered his as yet imperceptible soul against the piano in the music room and won.
誰もいない どころへ行こう
High school was not kind to a boy with no emotions. It was true that bullies couldn't get any rise out of him, and so, after a few abortive efforts to provoke even the minutest expression of agony from the small black-haired boy, the effort proved too large and the mess too tiresome to clean up, red on white shirt cuffs and seeped into bottoms of navy school-issued neckties. But the resulting silent scorn was also a kind of collective torture. His classmates nodded hello and goodbye, like the well-mannered little savages that high school-aged children are before they go out into the wider world and get crushed properly into the dust ground from the ashes of their fathers' bones before them. That was all the attention that was minded to Kyungsoo, the small dark-haired boy who was known, not by the rank of his father nor the beauty of his mother, but by his own private eccentricity - his lack of expression.
In the second year of high school, some of his braver contemporaries coined the nickname: "tombstone" which was the name he was thereby permanently christened with. Even the teachers in the private employee lounge secretly gossiped behind his back: "I swear on all that's holy that that boy gives me the screaming terrors; I'm convinced he can read my mind and knows everything I'm thinking with that blank expression of his." Because while his face may have been blank, his eyes, dark pools of thought, were more apt to suck the onlooker into a maze of personal misgivings and regrets, from which it was difficult to emerge unscathed by personal judgement.
Mirrors tell no lies and make no promises.
By the third year of high school, Kyungsoo was largely left to his own devices, as long as he submitted his exercises on time, sat to write examinations in the correct rooms at the correct times, and showed up for roll call, he was generally pretty free to do as he pleased, which was one thing, and one thing only.
Kyungsoo’s next destination was St. Christiansen Academy, a well-respected institution which owed its name not to a saint or other holy individual but rather to an idea the first headmaster had that the addition of the prefix "St." to a common family name, would raise the level of the school from merely ordinary to exemplary. From the moment Kyungsoo set foot in the hallowed front hall of the third floor music room in the old building, the room was his and his alone. This, the room with the grand piano which had been the envy of all first and second year pianists alike as only the third years were permitted to sign up for the draw which awarded the use of the room and the instrument therein. For each week of the duration of the entire school year, a single lucky student was awarded the use of room, trespassers to be punished severely and have all further drawing rights erased. For the entire duration of his academic sojourn at St. Christiansen Academy, Kyungsoo had sole rights to this much coveted room and no one could explain why. It was merely another one of those incontestable facts, like the general knowledge that the pot roast on Wednesdays after the full moon was poisonous to first years unless they had previously paid a five cent tribute to the fifth Griffith outside the chapel, or that the head librarian was a vampire and would suck you dry if you so much as dared to think about keeping a library book past the due date.
And so Kyungsoo spent his high school life in silence, with whispering classrooms and pale faces merely an afterthought to the piano in the third floor music room which accepted the boy's only expression; the angry lashes of his fingers as the music poured out of the long and dexterous digits to fill the small room and echo down to the foundations of the buildings.
Until.
Crash
"That's the kid that gets to use the third floor music room."
"Isn't that the room that's supposed to be for all the third years?"
"Yeah, but he's been using it exclusively since he started at this school."
Kyungsoo is used to all the gossip, the waves of noise that rise and fall like tides to carry away much lighter craft than his. He's settled down for the long haul, an ocean of calm, personal silence in the storm. The storm is you. He fetches a tray in silence, nods once as the kitchen staff in the line apportion him meat and potatoes and salad and bread, and retreats to his accustomed table in the corner, shadowed by the ancient oak tree outside, roots wreaking havoc with the cafeteria foundations.
The brussel sprouts are bitter in his mouth, a piano out of tune, a sour note. He flexes his fingers and forces the mouthful down before pushing the rest away to the edge of his plate, the metal of his fork scratching the porcelain plate with a shrill sound.
"Hey you."
Kyungsoo continues eating. Voices echo through the room, bouncing off the windows. Hundreds of voices, saying nothing.
"Hey you. Sitting at the table." The voice is loud, harsh, grating, and aimed in what appears to be his direction. He looks up in surprise.
Someone is talking to him, not around him.
Not about him to others.
"Look at him," another voice says, mocking. "I can see the appeal."
"Probably didn't take much," a third voice says. Kyungsoo doesn't know these people. You don't know anyone.
He shrugs, goes back to eating, but they don't leave.
"So when did it start?" The voice sounds honestly curious and Kyungsoo makes the mistake of answering.
"Start what?" he says, laying his fork down, the faint ring of the tines touching the porcelain. The girl is tall, statuesque in her uniform, blazer pressed and knee socks perfectly arranged. She doesn't have any music at all.
"When did you start doing it?" the second voice asks, and he doesn't want to to continue the conversation, he knows the poisonous road it's leading towards, I thought I was done with this, but he's too familiar with the tone. It will never stop.
"Start doing what?" he asks, dark eyes glaring up at the boy with copper-rimmed glasses, an awkward pimple adorning his chin left of centre. The skin is red and puffy around it.
"Start fucking the principal." The third person, another boy to round out the trio, is on the short side and rather lumpy. The wool of his uniform vest is pilled and his fingers, long and shapely and perfect for playing the piano, are callused and knotted. Rugby.
Kyungsoo stares at them and doesn't know what to say. He's rarely bullied and is mostly ignored. No one has ever focused on him with this kind of menace. He tries to smile it off, shrugs.
"I don't know what you're talking about." The less said, the better.
But they don't leave it alone.
"We know you've got some kind of back deal going," the girl says, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers. Her red fingernail polish is chipped; it's not attractive.
"We thought it might be something else," glasses boy adds, running a wet tongue over chapped lips.
"But one look at you and it's pretty obvious," rugby boy concludes, tapping his fingers on the table. The knuckles are red.
Kyungsoo is getting angry by now, but it doesn't show. Nothing ever shows.
"I don't even know the principal," he protests, but he can tell they aren't listening. They don't see him at all; he’s just an excuse because they're bored and procrastinating and need an outlet. And maybe there is something there, some lurking resentment. He's not sure himself how he came to be the sole user of the third floor music room. It just...happened. He stumbled in his first day, lost in a new school and not wanting to ask for help, not realizing it was a designated practice room. The piano was perfect.
"Stop lying," the girl says, and her expression is darkening from bored to menacing. Definitely a grudge.
"I'm not," Kyungsoo says, the anger trembling in his fingertips and staining his irises sooty. No one notices.
"I don't fucking think so," rugby boy says. His fingers twitch, remnants of piano scales hidden under years of falling in the rain. This is starting to make sense.
It's about the music.
"Look -" Kyungsoo is about to try to explain the circumstances when glasses boy cuts him off.
"Stop making excuses," he practically froths at the mouth. "You're the sole user of a practice room that's supposed be available to everyone and you've been using it since day one!" There's a silence around them now, voices falling quiet as students begin to notice the commotion. The girl straightens, arching her back proudly, while rugby boy scrunches into his vest. Kyungsoo's face is blank, Shostakovich's fourth symphony ringing through his fingers but it doesn't show.
He doesn't know what to say. I don't know either, probably isn't going to douse the flames. He tries anyway.
"I don't know why," he begins, "I merely stumbled into it one day before I knew otherwise and after that -"
"And after that you stumbled into the principal's office." The girl's sneer is toxic, the ugly expression twisting an otherwise pretty face. Kyungsoo tries to smile apologetically but he can only see the flames rising. The cafeteria is silent now.
"And stop making that face!" Rugby boy snaps, his knuckles white as he slams a fist on the table. The porcelain dishes jump, but Kyungsoo doesn't startle and that makes it worse.
Until.
もしも叶うなら 二人に願おうlove
Footsteps wind their way softly around the obstacle course of chairs, tables, elbows and general teenage wreckage, what time had brought in and flung onto shore. No one notices; they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. A collectively held breath.
Kyungsoo is still sitting, and the girl and glasses boy are watching rugby boy lose it. Will there be blood? Everyone is taking silent bets.
"I put $400 on Kyungsoo," a sudden voice rings in the void.
Everyone looks around.
There's a boy standing in the space between chairs. Dark hair and upperclassman uniform. He's from sixth year. College. Everyone stares at the anomaly.
"What are you doing here?" the girl asks, her voice is too careless, throwing up too much of a façade. She's out of her element and she knows it.
"You know him?" Glasses boy is half scornful and half shocked. Kyungsoo is surprised himself - not even the teachers remember his name.
Tombstone.
"Kyungsoo?" The boy sounds surprised. "Of course I know him. He's a musical genius." Kyungsoo sifts through his memories, trying to recall a face, a name, a glance in the hallway - nothing. The older boy is a complete stranger.
"So you know about the practice room then?" Rugby boy is still too angry, his gaze too focused, his rage too pronounced. Anything will tip him over the edge.
The boy smiles, winks.
Winks.
"It's supposed to be a secret, but my father hopes that he'll be able to get into J-, which would look great for the school." His smile in Kyungsoo's direction is slightly apologetic. What are you even talking about?
But rugby boy's shoulders slowly slump as the air sinks out of them. Everyone understands school here, a world of elbows and kicks and racing for the top, hands dragging at your heels.
"Who's your father then?" he asks in a last-ditch attempt at justification.
"The principal," the boy says offhandedly. His brown hair flickers from gold to honey as the leaves of the oak tree outside the window wave in the wind.
The trio's mouths drop before they slink backwards into the maze of tables and chairs and students who engulf them in a sudden cacophony of conversation.
Kyungsoo looks at the boy. He's not exactly impressed.
"That was quite the story," he finally says, going back to his food. It's cold now, and considerably less pleasant. "How do you know me anyway?"
"I heard you playing in the third floor music room on the first day of my third year," he says. "You have so much expression in your music." But then you saw my face. Kyungsoo doesn't even bother to sigh. The potatoes are gluey in his mouth. He'll have to get another plate. He's standing up, reaching for his tray, when the boy extends his hand.
"I'm Yifan by the way," he says. He's smiling, but his eyes look nervous. I might have a tombstone face, but yours gives too much away. His fingers laugh, Beethoven, opus 129.
"Stop laughing at me," Yifan says, practically pouting. Kyungsoo stops.
"You could tell I was laughing?" He's surprised. No one can ever tell what he's thinking, not even his parents.
"Of course," Yifan shrugs. "Like before, when you were furious. I was afraid you were going to hurt somebody if I didn't say anything."
Kyungsoo looks Yifan up and down before grinning, picking up his tray to swap his cold food for something slightly more appetizing.
"So now that we've met, can we maybe be friends?" Yifan might be tall but as he trails behind awkwardly, Kyungsoo is reminded of the puppy he always wanted as a child but was never allowed to get. "And stop grinning at me." There's a distinct rosy blush to his cheeks.
Yifan looks cool but it's quite apparent that he's awkward and petulant and has a warm heart. And he can tell what Kyungsoo is feeling.
I like you.
Kyungsoo nods, dumping his tray at the wall slots and fetching a new one. He can tell Yifan is still following him, and it makes him feel surprisingly happy.
It's kind of obvious that you like me a lot.
Food tastes surprisingly good when you're not alone. Kyungsoo looks at Yifan sitting across the table from him and thinks that he could get used to this.
Yifan
僕には 愛以外もう歌えない
There wasn't really anything remarkable about Yifan. He was bright, he smiled, his mother bought him cake for his birthday. He blew out the candles and if he missed one, that was perfectly acceptable. He had a place in his mother's company after all. His grades were always acceptable, he went to class, talked to friends, handed in science projects that didn't make it to the school fair, sat in his room and listened to classical music and collected plush toys.
The plush toys, when his father found out about them, were slightly less unremarkable but it was alright. Nothing was really expected of him anyway. His mother only laughed, and started bringing home the occasional stuffed dog or alpaca from her business travels.
When he began high school at his father's school, slipping into the role of the principal's son like a second skin, it was the same thing all over again. Slightly more pressure, because he was expected to be an example, but if he wasn't always top of his class that was okay. Girls thought he was cool - he winked, said something, went home and tried to figure out what he'd said that had caused them to giggle and flush, cheeks rosy as they gossiped to each other in the hallways and peered at him through windows.
He knew he'd disappointed his father by not taking up piano; honestly, he'd tried, but his grandmother had been a concert pianist and anything he managed to produce, even after weeks and months of finger exercises, scales, grueling practice and red eyes, nothing measured up. He never even bothered to perform. His mother sighed but still smiled and fixed him hot chocolate, squishing him into a hug even when he was too tall.
He didn't really like anybody in particular but he dated a couple girls and even a couple of boys, listened to gossip but didn't spread it, hung out with classmates after school even when he wanted to go home, joined the basketball team because he couldn't play piano and got a tattoo. His father, when he found out, was not at all impressed. But it was alright. His mother secretly showed him hers.
It was a regular kind of life.
ねぇ 胸の音
Everything changed in third year. He'd been wandering the hallways, bored, before opening assembly, tempted to skip but also not wanting to be remarkable by failing to attend. Life in the public eye was exhausting, sometimes, even though his mother said he could transfer to another school whenever he wanted. Yifan looked at his father, tired eyes after a long day - tired from the things he didn't say about students and gossip and urban legends resulting in five students being arrested for breaking into the chapel at night to catch the ghost lurking in the hallway. They’d inadvertently set the sacristy on fire when they scared themselves with their own shadows and knocked over the candles. He didn't transfer.
He was wandering along the third floor corridor when faint strains of music wrapped themselves around his ears, the gentle sounds of the piano plucking at the lapels of his jacket like a tempting spring breeze during exam time; he knew he wasn't going to make it to the assembly if he followed the melody but he kept walking anyway, stopping outside a door that was ajar.
It was the third floor music room. A special domain of third years, that special nostalgic last year he was currently embarking on. It was a year of friends and laughter but also college applications and cramming notes and, if you were in music, practicing until your muscles screamed. Yifan wasn't in music. He wondered, peering around the corner of the door, if this was a zealous third year hoping to get ahead of their classmates, climbinh to the top of the line. The music was beautiful. He wondered if he knew them.
He didn't. He could tell, from the uniform, that it was a first year; he would have been shocked at their temerity except for the fact that the boy sitting there, fingers caressing the keys and dancing up and down the ivory steps, black, white, black, probably had no idea that it was a special practice room or that he was doing anything wrong at all. And the longer Yifan stood there, the longer he felt certain that this strange boy, whoever he was, deserved to be there.
His father was happy to listen to his request, especially after hearing the boy for himself. Yifan watched his father smile, standing in the third floor corridor, and for the first time he didn't feel like he'd let him down. Somehow, starting from that year, he began taking everything more seriously. Good enough wasn't acceptable anymore. He would tiptoe down the third floor corridor and sit for hours outside the door of the music room, reading his textbooks or making notes. He started catching the boy out of the corner of his eyes, tracing him as he walked, hearing people talk about him. They called him tombstone, but Yifan didn't understand. He only saw Kyungsoo, full of emotion that spilled out of his fingers for hours and hours until the sun sank from the sky.
And when he saw him in the cafeteria, just passing by when he noticed the eerie silence and the echoing accusations, he couldn't stop himself from going in, not because Kyungsoo needed the help, but because he, Yifan, did. I need you.
Please notice me.
star falling
ʚ Pairing(s): Kyungsoo/Yifan
ʚ Rating: PG-13
ʚ Warnings: some swearing
ʚ Word count: 3646 words
ʚ Summary: Kyungsoo has never shown any expressions, his emotions only storming through his fingers into the music that screams from the piano, until Yifan stumbles across the pianist in the third floor music room door one day and reads between the notes.
ʚ Author’s notes/Messages for the recipient: Thanks so much to the mods for being so understanding. Thanks to my recipent for the chance to write this pairing; I hope you like the story and that I did the prompt justice. Thank you to A for beta-ing despite travel and to tlist for being there, and finally to someone who should really join that thing. Really.
Japanese text is taken from Akanishi Jin's Mi Amor (lyrics). The title, 偶然, means chance or coincidence. 然 is possiblity and 偶 is accident, or conversely, couple.
Kyungsoo
星一つ 捕まえて 今出かけよう
His piano teacher always told him "piano, piano, pianissimo" but Kyungsoo felt in crashes and bangs and explosion. Beethoven, not Debussy. Tchaikovsky, not Satie. His fingers scraped over the black and white ivory, the wood and strings crying, moaning, and screaming into the dark.
After a while she gave up. There was just no reasoning with a boy who "never showed a single expression on his blank face; I'm positive I could shout at him and he wouldn't blink an eyelash." In fact, she had shouted at him, not once in a while but often, his impassive expression steady as the the raging ocean of her words crashed over and through and past him, leaving the rock untouched.
A different teacher came after that, and then another one, and then another, faces recycled like the new paint on the hulls of fishing boats every season as they went out to face the anger and rage of the waves.
Kyungsoo stood in the music room, beside his piano, and watched each new face being led in, bright and fresh and hopeful at the start of each new fishing season before the tides came, and the storms, and the blank days with no destination in sight. Crew members would resort to venting their frustrations on each other - "you're such a useless child why can't you do what I tell you? And wipe that smirk off your face!"- they always left, battered and bruised against an impenetrable ocean that absorbed all shock and took no damage, only the black and white piano keys taking each new pounding as Romeo died over and over again and Juliet drove the knife into her side with a red rush of emotion.
There were no roses here.
By the time Kyungsoo was in high school he had been left largely to his own devices; with an executive for a father and a high society lady for a mother, neither had time nor inclination to molly-coddle - as they thought - a strange and somehow offensive child. He had been shipped to an exclusive boarding school for his middle years, which he had hated and which had in turn hated him. So for high school, he was allowed a choice of the five elite academies within the city perimeter and that was that. His parents officially washed their hands off him.
Kyungsoo, in the meantime, battered his as yet imperceptible soul against the piano in the music room and won.
誰もいない どころへ行こう
High school was not kind to a boy with no emotions. It was true that bullies couldn't get any rise out of him, and so, after a few abortive efforts to provoke even the minutest expression of agony from the small black-haired boy, the effort proved too large and the mess too tiresome to clean up, red on white shirt cuffs and seeped into bottoms of navy school-issued neckties. But the resulting silent scorn was also a kind of collective torture. His classmates nodded hello and goodbye, like the well-mannered little savages that high school-aged children are before they go out into the wider world and get crushed properly into the dust ground from the ashes of their fathers' bones before them. That was all the attention that was minded to Kyungsoo, the small dark-haired boy who was known, not by the rank of his father nor the beauty of his mother, but by his own private eccentricity - his lack of expression.
In the second year of high school, some of his braver contemporaries coined the nickname: "tombstone" which was the name he was thereby permanently christened with. Even the teachers in the private employee lounge secretly gossiped behind his back: "I swear on all that's holy that that boy gives me the screaming terrors; I'm convinced he can read my mind and knows everything I'm thinking with that blank expression of his." Because while his face may have been blank, his eyes, dark pools of thought, were more apt to suck the onlooker into a maze of personal misgivings and regrets, from which it was difficult to emerge unscathed by personal judgement.
Mirrors tell no lies and make no promises.
By the third year of high school, Kyungsoo was largely left to his own devices, as long as he submitted his exercises on time, sat to write examinations in the correct rooms at the correct times, and showed up for roll call, he was generally pretty free to do as he pleased, which was one thing, and one thing only.
Kyungsoo’s next destination was St. Christiansen Academy, a well-respected institution which owed its name not to a saint or other holy individual but rather to an idea the first headmaster had that the addition of the prefix "St." to a common family name, would raise the level of the school from merely ordinary to exemplary. From the moment Kyungsoo set foot in the hallowed front hall of the third floor music room in the old building, the room was his and his alone. This, the room with the grand piano which had been the envy of all first and second year pianists alike as only the third years were permitted to sign up for the draw which awarded the use of the room and the instrument therein. For each week of the duration of the entire school year, a single lucky student was awarded the use of room, trespassers to be punished severely and have all further drawing rights erased. For the entire duration of his academic sojourn at St. Christiansen Academy, Kyungsoo had sole rights to this much coveted room and no one could explain why. It was merely another one of those incontestable facts, like the general knowledge that the pot roast on Wednesdays after the full moon was poisonous to first years unless they had previously paid a five cent tribute to the fifth Griffith outside the chapel, or that the head librarian was a vampire and would suck you dry if you so much as dared to think about keeping a library book past the due date.
And so Kyungsoo spent his high school life in silence, with whispering classrooms and pale faces merely an afterthought to the piano in the third floor music room which accepted the boy's only expression; the angry lashes of his fingers as the music poured out of the long and dexterous digits to fill the small room and echo down to the foundations of the buildings.
Until.
Crash
"That's the kid that gets to use the third floor music room."
"Isn't that the room that's supposed to be for all the third years?"
"Yeah, but he's been using it exclusively since he started at this school."
Kyungsoo is used to all the gossip, the waves of noise that rise and fall like tides to carry away much lighter craft than his. He's settled down for the long haul, an ocean of calm, personal silence in the storm. The storm is you. He fetches a tray in silence, nods once as the kitchen staff in the line apportion him meat and potatoes and salad and bread, and retreats to his accustomed table in the corner, shadowed by the ancient oak tree outside, roots wreaking havoc with the cafeteria foundations.
The brussel sprouts are bitter in his mouth, a piano out of tune, a sour note. He flexes his fingers and forces the mouthful down before pushing the rest away to the edge of his plate, the metal of his fork scratching the porcelain plate with a shrill sound.
"Hey you."
Kyungsoo continues eating. Voices echo through the room, bouncing off the windows. Hundreds of voices, saying nothing.
"Hey you. Sitting at the table." The voice is loud, harsh, grating, and aimed in what appears to be his direction. He looks up in surprise.
Someone is talking to him, not around him.
Not about him to others.
"Look at him," another voice says, mocking. "I can see the appeal."
"Probably didn't take much," a third voice says. Kyungsoo doesn't know these people. You don't know anyone.
He shrugs, goes back to eating, but they don't leave.
"So when did it start?" The voice sounds honestly curious and Kyungsoo makes the mistake of answering.
"Start what?" he says, laying his fork down, the faint ring of the tines touching the porcelain. The girl is tall, statuesque in her uniform, blazer pressed and knee socks perfectly arranged. She doesn't have any music at all.
"When did you start doing it?" the second voice asks, and he doesn't want to to continue the conversation, he knows the poisonous road it's leading towards, I thought I was done with this, but he's too familiar with the tone. It will never stop.
"Start doing what?" he asks, dark eyes glaring up at the boy with copper-rimmed glasses, an awkward pimple adorning his chin left of centre. The skin is red and puffy around it.
"Start fucking the principal." The third person, another boy to round out the trio, is on the short side and rather lumpy. The wool of his uniform vest is pilled and his fingers, long and shapely and perfect for playing the piano, are callused and knotted. Rugby.
Kyungsoo stares at them and doesn't know what to say. He's rarely bullied and is mostly ignored. No one has ever focused on him with this kind of menace. He tries to smile it off, shrugs.
"I don't know what you're talking about." The less said, the better.
But they don't leave it alone.
"We know you've got some kind of back deal going," the girl says, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers. Her red fingernail polish is chipped; it's not attractive.
"We thought it might be something else," glasses boy adds, running a wet tongue over chapped lips.
"But one look at you and it's pretty obvious," rugby boy concludes, tapping his fingers on the table. The knuckles are red.
Kyungsoo is getting angry by now, but it doesn't show. Nothing ever shows.
"I don't even know the principal," he protests, but he can tell they aren't listening. They don't see him at all; he’s just an excuse because they're bored and procrastinating and need an outlet. And maybe there is something there, some lurking resentment. He's not sure himself how he came to be the sole user of the third floor music room. It just...happened. He stumbled in his first day, lost in a new school and not wanting to ask for help, not realizing it was a designated practice room. The piano was perfect.
"Stop lying," the girl says, and her expression is darkening from bored to menacing. Definitely a grudge.
"I'm not," Kyungsoo says, the anger trembling in his fingertips and staining his irises sooty. No one notices.
"I don't fucking think so," rugby boy says. His fingers twitch, remnants of piano scales hidden under years of falling in the rain. This is starting to make sense.
It's about the music.
"Look -" Kyungsoo is about to try to explain the circumstances when glasses boy cuts him off.
"Stop making excuses," he practically froths at the mouth. "You're the sole user of a practice room that's supposed be available to everyone and you've been using it since day one!" There's a silence around them now, voices falling quiet as students begin to notice the commotion. The girl straightens, arching her back proudly, while rugby boy scrunches into his vest. Kyungsoo's face is blank, Shostakovich's fourth symphony ringing through his fingers but it doesn't show.
He doesn't know what to say. I don't know either, probably isn't going to douse the flames. He tries anyway.
"I don't know why," he begins, "I merely stumbled into it one day before I knew otherwise and after that -"
"And after that you stumbled into the principal's office." The girl's sneer is toxic, the ugly expression twisting an otherwise pretty face. Kyungsoo tries to smile apologetically but he can only see the flames rising. The cafeteria is silent now.
"And stop making that face!" Rugby boy snaps, his knuckles white as he slams a fist on the table. The porcelain dishes jump, but Kyungsoo doesn't startle and that makes it worse.
Until.
もしも叶うなら 二人に願おうlove
Footsteps wind their way softly around the obstacle course of chairs, tables, elbows and general teenage wreckage, what time had brought in and flung onto shore. No one notices; they're waiting for the other shoe to drop. A collectively held breath.
Kyungsoo is still sitting, and the girl and glasses boy are watching rugby boy lose it. Will there be blood? Everyone is taking silent bets.
"I put $400 on Kyungsoo," a sudden voice rings in the void.
Everyone looks around.
There's a boy standing in the space between chairs. Dark hair and upperclassman uniform. He's from sixth year. College. Everyone stares at the anomaly.
"What are you doing here?" the girl asks, her voice is too careless, throwing up too much of a façade. She's out of her element and she knows it.
"You know him?" Glasses boy is half scornful and half shocked. Kyungsoo is surprised himself - not even the teachers remember his name.
Tombstone.
"Kyungsoo?" The boy sounds surprised. "Of course I know him. He's a musical genius." Kyungsoo sifts through his memories, trying to recall a face, a name, a glance in the hallway - nothing. The older boy is a complete stranger.
"So you know about the practice room then?" Rugby boy is still too angry, his gaze too focused, his rage too pronounced. Anything will tip him over the edge.
The boy smiles, winks.
Winks.
"It's supposed to be a secret, but my father hopes that he'll be able to get into J-, which would look great for the school." His smile in Kyungsoo's direction is slightly apologetic. What are you even talking about?
But rugby boy's shoulders slowly slump as the air sinks out of them. Everyone understands school here, a world of elbows and kicks and racing for the top, hands dragging at your heels.
"Who's your father then?" he asks in a last-ditch attempt at justification.
"The principal," the boy says offhandedly. His brown hair flickers from gold to honey as the leaves of the oak tree outside the window wave in the wind.
The trio's mouths drop before they slink backwards into the maze of tables and chairs and students who engulf them in a sudden cacophony of conversation.
Kyungsoo looks at the boy. He's not exactly impressed.
"That was quite the story," he finally says, going back to his food. It's cold now, and considerably less pleasant. "How do you know me anyway?"
"I heard you playing in the third floor music room on the first day of my third year," he says. "You have so much expression in your music." But then you saw my face. Kyungsoo doesn't even bother to sigh. The potatoes are gluey in his mouth. He'll have to get another plate. He's standing up, reaching for his tray, when the boy extends his hand.
"I'm Yifan by the way," he says. He's smiling, but his eyes look nervous. I might have a tombstone face, but yours gives too much away. His fingers laugh, Beethoven, opus 129.
"Stop laughing at me," Yifan says, practically pouting. Kyungsoo stops.
"You could tell I was laughing?" He's surprised. No one can ever tell what he's thinking, not even his parents.
"Of course," Yifan shrugs. "Like before, when you were furious. I was afraid you were going to hurt somebody if I didn't say anything."
Kyungsoo looks Yifan up and down before grinning, picking up his tray to swap his cold food for something slightly more appetizing.
"So now that we've met, can we maybe be friends?" Yifan might be tall but as he trails behind awkwardly, Kyungsoo is reminded of the puppy he always wanted as a child but was never allowed to get. "And stop grinning at me." There's a distinct rosy blush to his cheeks.
Yifan looks cool but it's quite apparent that he's awkward and petulant and has a warm heart. And he can tell what Kyungsoo is feeling.
I like you.
Kyungsoo nods, dumping his tray at the wall slots and fetching a new one. He can tell Yifan is still following him, and it makes him feel surprisingly happy.
It's kind of obvious that you like me a lot.
Food tastes surprisingly good when you're not alone. Kyungsoo looks at Yifan sitting across the table from him and thinks that he could get used to this.
Yifan
僕には 愛以外もう歌えない
There wasn't really anything remarkable about Yifan. He was bright, he smiled, his mother bought him cake for his birthday. He blew out the candles and if he missed one, that was perfectly acceptable. He had a place in his mother's company after all. His grades were always acceptable, he went to class, talked to friends, handed in science projects that didn't make it to the school fair, sat in his room and listened to classical music and collected plush toys.
The plush toys, when his father found out about them, were slightly less unremarkable but it was alright. Nothing was really expected of him anyway. His mother only laughed, and started bringing home the occasional stuffed dog or alpaca from her business travels.
When he began high school at his father's school, slipping into the role of the principal's son like a second skin, it was the same thing all over again. Slightly more pressure, because he was expected to be an example, but if he wasn't always top of his class that was okay. Girls thought he was cool - he winked, said something, went home and tried to figure out what he'd said that had caused them to giggle and flush, cheeks rosy as they gossiped to each other in the hallways and peered at him through windows.
He knew he'd disappointed his father by not taking up piano; honestly, he'd tried, but his grandmother had been a concert pianist and anything he managed to produce, even after weeks and months of finger exercises, scales, grueling practice and red eyes, nothing measured up. He never even bothered to perform. His mother sighed but still smiled and fixed him hot chocolate, squishing him into a hug even when he was too tall.
He didn't really like anybody in particular but he dated a couple girls and even a couple of boys, listened to gossip but didn't spread it, hung out with classmates after school even when he wanted to go home, joined the basketball team because he couldn't play piano and got a tattoo. His father, when he found out, was not at all impressed. But it was alright. His mother secretly showed him hers.
It was a regular kind of life.
ねぇ 胸の音
Everything changed in third year. He'd been wandering the hallways, bored, before opening assembly, tempted to skip but also not wanting to be remarkable by failing to attend. Life in the public eye was exhausting, sometimes, even though his mother said he could transfer to another school whenever he wanted. Yifan looked at his father, tired eyes after a long day - tired from the things he didn't say about students and gossip and urban legends resulting in five students being arrested for breaking into the chapel at night to catch the ghost lurking in the hallway. They’d inadvertently set the sacristy on fire when they scared themselves with their own shadows and knocked over the candles. He didn't transfer.
He was wandering along the third floor corridor when faint strains of music wrapped themselves around his ears, the gentle sounds of the piano plucking at the lapels of his jacket like a tempting spring breeze during exam time; he knew he wasn't going to make it to the assembly if he followed the melody but he kept walking anyway, stopping outside a door that was ajar.
It was the third floor music room. A special domain of third years, that special nostalgic last year he was currently embarking on. It was a year of friends and laughter but also college applications and cramming notes and, if you were in music, practicing until your muscles screamed. Yifan wasn't in music. He wondered, peering around the corner of the door, if this was a zealous third year hoping to get ahead of their classmates, climbinh to the top of the line. The music was beautiful. He wondered if he knew them.
He didn't. He could tell, from the uniform, that it was a first year; he would have been shocked at their temerity except for the fact that the boy sitting there, fingers caressing the keys and dancing up and down the ivory steps, black, white, black, probably had no idea that it was a special practice room or that he was doing anything wrong at all. And the longer Yifan stood there, the longer he felt certain that this strange boy, whoever he was, deserved to be there.
His father was happy to listen to his request, especially after hearing the boy for himself. Yifan watched his father smile, standing in the third floor corridor, and for the first time he didn't feel like he'd let him down. Somehow, starting from that year, he began taking everything more seriously. Good enough wasn't acceptable anymore. He would tiptoe down the third floor corridor and sit for hours outside the door of the music room, reading his textbooks or making notes. He started catching the boy out of the corner of his eyes, tracing him as he walked, hearing people talk about him. They called him tombstone, but Yifan didn't understand. He only saw Kyungsoo, full of emotion that spilled out of his fingers for hours and hours until the sun sank from the sky.
And when he saw him in the cafeteria, just passing by when he noticed the eerie silence and the echoing accusations, he couldn't stop himself from going in, not because Kyungsoo needed the help, but because he, Yifan, did. I need you.
Please notice me.
star falling